Life in the Mid-Century US: a primer for writers of MASH fic
Jun. 29th, 2025 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beatrice_otterI read a lot of MASH fic recently, and while most of it was very good, there were also a ton of inaccuracies about what mid-century America was like. I'm not an expert, but at the same time, I did listen to my parents and grandparents when they talked about what life was like when they were younger. And also, I know what's changed within my lifetime (born in 1982), and quite a lot of things people today take for granted are actually new within my lifetime, and thus not around prior to the 1980s. Now, this is fanfic, and if you don't care about historical accuracy in your fic, that is a fine and valid choice and I salute you. If, however, you do want to at least try to avoid major gaffes, here are things I've noticed that people get wrong a lot:
( Women's rights: Ms. )
( Travel )
( Money and Credit )( Alcohol )
( Childcare )
( Phone Calls )
( Progressive Ideas )
( The Ad Council )
( Entertainment )
( Police )
These are just a few of the things that have changed in the last fifty years. And, of course, I'm only one person and might have got things wrong. Let me know if you see things I missed
the squirrels are in the tree
Jun. 29th, 2025 12:03 amursamajorhyounpark and I wrapped up our extremely concert-filled June last weekend with two shows in Wine Country, backing up Andrea Bocelli and friends. Three rehearsals in ten days with almost entirely new-to-me repertoire - it felt good to have that kind of intensity of practice again. It's different from regular rehearsal, where we have a month, two, sometimes even three to slowly, steadily polish a single piece. Harder to cram into daily life, but always worth it.Saturday was also Hyoun's birthday, so I was highly amused when the sound check opened with La donna è mobile from Rigoletto. Because I originally learned that melody in fourth grade as a birthday song!
( Archiving the lyrics here because I know I was able to find it on the internet at some point in the past, but no longer. )
( the rest of the Bocelli concert experience )
And now, my Wednesday nights are free for a (very) few weeks! (Summersings start July 23, and then after that we're right into rehearsals for Verdi; I hope I'll be able to cram in one or two Wednesday night Friends With Bikes rides during the time off, but we'll need to see.)
The OTC's commercial promotion post
Jun. 29th, 2025 12:11 ammerryghoulI've been linking to the summaries of books I use as summaries for
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
unconventionalcourtship to prove that they're real books since the goal is to alter a romance novel summary for a fic. I'm not advocating people to actually buy the book. I don't even know these authors. I haven't read their books. 🤐 I guess in the future I may just leave the links to the comm announcement posts and on DW but I'm a bit annoyed I'm being lumped in with people who actually are "please go to my Patreon for more!" when I thought I was doing a good deed.Also: The OTC mentions Twitch but I want to clarify that getting a Twitch account is free. I would assume under their TOS that asking people to get Twitch subscriptions (with or without Amazon Prime) is against their TOS. There is no such thing as "Twitch Prime." And technically I think X actually can't be allowed to since you can subscribe to individual creators on X.
IDK, I think this policy needs a little bit of hammering out because to be fair it's thorny to enforce their commercial promotion policy as is.